


the scars of their hatred

by vands38



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Flogging, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Beta Read, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Period-Typical Homophobia, Public Humiliation, Punishment, Top Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, mostly hurt some comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:08:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28851840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands38/pseuds/vands38
Summary: Geralt watches as Jaskier is flogged for the crime of loving him, knowing that the scars will last long after they have faded.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 16
Kudos: 200





	the scars of their hatred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlooodyMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlooodyMoon/gifts).



> blooodymoon requested an angsty fic for their birthday, so enjoy???
> 
> content warnings: graphic description of violence (flogging, stoning, hanging), graphic description of gore including urine and excrement, homophobia and homophobic language, gay stereotyping*, explicit sexual content, vomit mention
> 
> * historically, in regards to sodomy, you were more likely to be punished for receiving rather than giving because of their perceived perception of manliness. unfortunately, the villains in this fic also ascribe to this stereotyping.
> 
> WARNING: If you think that reading detailed violent homophobia will upset you, please turn back now and read [Daylight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27178741) instead, which is much the same length and covers the same themes of homophobia but is much less graphic. If you find yourself affected by the themes depicted here, please get in touch your preferred LGBT helpline (e.g. [switchboard (UK)](https://switchboard.lgbt/)) to talk it through with a trained professional. Remember, the scenes depicted here illustrate the mistreatment of queer people historically but YOU, reader, are living in a much more enlightened society. The future is bright and definitely queer. 🌈
> 
> (I will proofread this when I can look at words again, but please forgive me for any errors in the meantime 💚)

*

Geralt can’t be seen to care as Jaskier is led onto the gallows with hands bound. The bard’s usual bright attire has been stripped from him, and some time ago judging by the dirt and bruises that litter his naked skin. There is a scant piece of cloth wrapped around his waist to protect his modesty but that seems to be the only kindness that the gaolers have bestowed as Jaskier is pushed onto the wooden stage alongside his brethren.

Geralt had left Jaskier for two days – for two _fucking_ days – and the bard has already been thrown into gaol. Geralt would be spitting curses at Jaskier for his carelessness if his own guilt would abate long enough to do so. After all, the Witcher has significant reason to feel guilty, seeing that Jaskier’s ‘crime’ is sodomy, and Geralt was the one caught sodding him.

The administration of this town are naive enough to believe that the only ‘deviant’ during sodomy is the man who submitted to the act. Geralt’s queer desires are just as profound as Jaskier’s but these bureaucrats don’t see sodomy as an act of love, but as an act of dominance and submission. And unfortunately, when the farmhand opened the barn door three days past and stumbled across them vigorously engaged in the act of sodomy amongst the hay bales, it had been Jaskier on the receiving end of this so-called ‘unnatural’ meeting of flesh, and his perceived femininity that they sought to punish now.

Geralt had encouraged Jaskier to leave the parish afterwards – urging him that it wasn’t safe to stay here after such exposure – but Jaskier insisted that he would be careful and stay somewhere safe while he awaited Geralt’s return. Geralt had eventually relented, and left for his contract. And now, Jaskier had been prescribed twenty lashes in a form of public humiliation so severe that Geralt knows he will never recover from it, even if the scars on his back eventually heal. His reputation will suffer for it. His heart will suffer for it. And the least Geralt can do is bear witness.

Jaskier catches his gaze across the crowd and even from this distance, Geralt can smell his trepidation and see the way his lips try to twist into a broken smile. The sight makes him _ache_.

*

Jaskier’s smile was the first thing that Geralt noticed about him – not the baby blue eyes, or the cocky saunter to his table, or even that terrible song he was belting out across the unappreciative tavern – no, it was his smile. It seemed open, and honest, and… innocent.

He probably should have walked away then. He didn’t though.

“You know, back at Oxenfurt, no one would have blinked an eye at two men picnicking together,” Jaskier said, lounging back on his elbows and squinting up into the midday sun, making a point to ignore the disdainful mutter of the farmer strolling by.

“We’re hardly picnicking, Jaskier. We stopped for lunch.”

The bard rolled his eyes and indicated the array of dried snacks between them and the blanket that he had insisted they sit on.

“Hmm,” Geralt said, unable to dispute the claim with such clear evidence laid before him.

“Anyway, refined _artistes_ like myself tend to enjoy the company of men, and if that man over there,” he said with a thumb pointed somewhere towards the road, “is sheltered enough not to understand the pleasures of such entanglements, then quite frankly, I feel sorry for the poor fellow.”

Geralt frowned and picked at his bread in thought, longing for Jaskier to clarify his meaning but afraid to state his own queer desires, lest he had misunderstood. “Entanglements…?” he hazarded.

Jaskier rolled his eyes before falling back on his elbows and tossing a peeled grape into his open mouth. The sight was sinful – delicate fingers, wet mouth, his shirt stretched across his chest, muscles flexing with the movement – “I mean, two men _fucking_ , Geralt. Don’t be such a prude. I’m sure you’ve stumbled across such things in your dozens of years on the Path.”

Geralt tore his eyes away from the grape juice that still lined Jaskier’s lips; tantalising in its proximity. There was still that innocence to his smile. Jaskier had yet to experience how his Oxenfurt dalliances would be perceived by these backwater towns and the bigoted fools that administered them.

“I have heard of such things,” Geralt said carefully, not yet wishing to reveal his own perversion, “but you ought to be careful in expressing such desires outside of familiar company. Some do not take kindly to the idea of two men laying together, and even less kindly to the idea that one might do so for _company_.”

*

The body of the first sodomite swings ominously from the gallows. They didn’t even do him the decency of covering his head. His last moments – panicked, and terrified – were cheered on by the bloodthirsty crowd before his bowels emptied and his head snapped in a sickening crunch.

Geralt grits his teeth at the callous display. Humans and their chronic lack of empathy; always needing to throw someone to the wolves to feed their own superiority. Geralt would storm the stage if he thought it would change the slightest fucking thing but he’s meddled in enough human affairs to know they always need a witch in a witch hunt and it doesn’t matter their supposed crimes. If it wasn’t this poor sod, it would have been another.

“Next!” someone calls, and then the mayor is unravelling the scroll and bellowing Jaskier’s fate across the gallows.

“Julian Alfred Pancratz, Viscount of Lettenhove. Occupation: troubadour. Pancratz has been found guilty of committing unnatural acts with a fellow degenerate –”

The crowd hiss and cheer and Geralt watches with horror as a boy no older than six-years-old skips to the front of the crowd with a bucket of pebbles.

“– Owing to the Viscount’s hitherto respectable status, the death penalty for sodomy has been reduced to twenty lashes and a stoning. On your marks, gentlemen.”

Geralt swallows his fear, still tasting Jaskier’s own trepidation on the breeze, as he is tied to a post at the front of the stage, his back to the executioner and his front to the crowd, close enough that even that boy’s pebbles will be able to hit their mark.

“One,” the executioner bellows, and then there is the stomach-churning crack of a whip.

*

Jaskier screamed and grasped behind him for some purchase as the surface grew increasingly slick under his hands. “Fuck, fuck, _Geralt_ –” he whined, as Geralt bent him further across the table. He mumbled nonsensically, pawing and pleading with any part of Geralt he could grasp as Geralt continued to slam into him, as hard as they both needed it.

Geralt had tried to resist. For five fucking years, he had tried to resist fucking his bard. But then the innocence had left Jaskier’s smile. He’d been rebuffed one too many times, spat on too many times, witnessed too many hangings and lashings and exiles, and eventually Geralt knew that the bard saw how it was to be queer in this stinking fucking world. Jaskier’s feet had dragged the entire way back to the abandoned cottage on the outskirts of town, disheartened at the news his previous lover had been exiled for ‘unnatural’ acts. Geralt sat him down at the creaky kitchen table, gave him a shot of whiskey, and then gave him the offer of a good fuck.

Jaskier had looked across at him, utterly gormless. “But you’re not… You don’t like men, Geralt.”

“I like them perfectly fine,” he rebuffed. “But I like them alive, and you were going to do something stupid before you realised what it cost. So, drink your fucking whiskey, and come find me when you’re ready to –”

But he hadn’t gotten that far. He’d barely stood up before Jaskier’s lips were crashing into his, hot and heavy and still tasting of distilled alcohol. Geralt wasn’t in the habit of kissing men but he’d be lying if he said he’d never thought about kissing Jaskier. The bard was always fucking talking and sometimes Geralt just wanted to stuff that fucking noise machine with his fist, or his cock, or… yes, sometimes, his mouth. The kiss was harsher than he expected, all sharp edges and burning passion, with none of the gentle innocence that he once imagined would taint Jaskier’s kisses. It was good though. Addicting. And soon Geralt had him bent over the table, pushing into him with no more than decade-oil cooking oil and a desperate need to fuck.

“Oh, shit,” Jaskier gasped, jerking into his own fist beneath the surface while his other arm clutched at the edge of the increasingly rickety table. “I’m close, Geralt. Please. Oh, fuckity, fucking, shiiit –”

His constant stream of curses were eventually cut short by a scream and the obscene sound of cum dripping down steadily onto the stone floor. Geralt wrenched him back from the table, pressing his sweaty back against his front and hooking his head over Jaskier’s shoulder until he could see the ruddy deflating cock for himself. A sight that he hadn’t seen for far too long. A sight that some men would hang him for enjoying. But, fuck, if it wasn’t beautiful.

Geralt growled and bit into his shoulder, pulling out so he could wrap his calloused hand around his own needy cock and splatter his seed across Jaskier’s back in an act of spontaneous possession. Unconscious guttural sounds fell from his lips in the haze of pleasure but he had the luxury of paying them no mind in this deserted locale and instead pulled Jaskier even closer, burrowing his face into the crook of Jaskier’s shoulder just to have the scent of sex and sweat fill his senses.

He startled some moments later when he felt Jaskier tangle exhausted fingers in his hair. An oddly tender touch after such a brutal fucking. “I need you to bugger me that hard every day for the rest of our lives,” Jaskier murmured, tilting his head back on Geralt’s chest to look him in the eye. “I mean it. That was too good to go unrepeated.”

Geralt closed his eyes against the onslaught of those pretty eyes and that pretty smile which was somehow even more captivating with the benefit of wisdom. He knew better than to indulge but he couldn’t argue with Jaskier’s logic. It was good. With practise, it could become even better.

He nodded against Jaskier’s neck, and Jaskier pulled him in for a kiss – softer, this time, sleepy and sweet, with his fingers still curled in the small hairs on Geralt’s nape – and Geralt realised he was totally and utterly _fucked_.

*

Geralt grits his teeth and winces at the pungent smell of Jaskier’s blood and piss and tears in the air. Fifteen strokes in and Jaskier is dripping in his own blood, with wet pants having pissed himself somewhere between the fourth and fifth strokes, and his delicate skin marred furiously by the continued stoning. He clutches onto the post with bound hands, slobbering and weeping, no longer able to maintain the facade. He barely even gasps when the whip cuts across his back on number sixteen, just shakes and sobs, and scrambles for his footing on the stage slick with his own bodily fluids.

Geralt feels nauseous at the sight. He wants to turn away. He wants to run his blade through every fucker in this fucking square. But he can’t. He _can’t_.

And so he watches, paralysed, as his lover is flayed apart in front of a cheering audience for a crime that shouldn’t exist.

He wishes he could take the punishment upon himself. After endless minutes of this torture, Geralt is delusional enough to think he would prefer to take the whipping than to watch it for a moment longer. After all, he _knows_ how to take pain beyond measure – he suffered through the Witcher trails after all – but he doesn’t know how to stomach the guilt and the pain of watching his lover take the lashing for them both. He would trade places with him in a heartbeat; let Jaskier be the one out here in the crowd, watching lash after lash, and stone after stone, and let him be the one to bear the scars for it.

After an eternity, the executioner calls out the last number, and when Jaskier’s hands are at last unbound, he falls in a crumpled pile of rags and piss and blood to the floor.

Geralt doesn’t even feel relieved that it’s over because he knows that, for Jaskier, it won’t truly be over for a very long time.

Jaskier’s swollen eyes flutter shut before his limp body is dragged off stage and dumped unceremoniously onto a nearby cart of hay, heedless of the open wounds on his back. Geralt can hear the hiss of pain even over the crowd’s hollering jeers. He listens until Jaskier’s ragged breathing evens out into an exhausted slumber and as he makes his way through the jostling crowds to gather him, remembers a sleep much more peaceful than this.

*

It was mid-morning in Oxenfurt. Geralt knew he should be on his way but for some reason he yearned to stay. He was warm and content in a large bed with soft sheets and the comforting presence of his lover beside him. Through the open window, he could hear the bells chime and the children run through the streets with unburdened laughter. Jaskier had been right to say that Oxenfurt was more open-minded than most cities. Geralt had attended Jaskier’s lectures, and shared his bed, and lounged in his rooms while Jaskier studied and composed and tried to catch grapes between his teeth. He had hardly left the bard’s side in three days, and yet no one had come knocking at their door, demanding an explanation or threatening to report their dalliances to the authorities. Absently, Geralt wondered if he might return here one day. If he could hang up his swords and lie, warm and content, in this bed beside Jaskier, until death came for him.

Geralt sighed, aware that his thoughts had led him down a dangerously naive path. It had only been a handful of months since he had started sharing the bard’s bed. It did not mean that there was a future here. It did not mean that he would not die in the jaws of some beast like Witchers were destined to do. It was foolhardy to indulge in such fantasies.

And yet.

He rolled over to gaze at his lover in the soft morning light, the bard yet untouched by the day’s concerns, and his growing worry lines smoothed out by sleep. Sometimes, when Jaskier looked like this, Geralt could pretend that he was still that innocent youth. He liked to imagine a world in which he didn’t have to wait for the world to break Jaskier before he could love him; a world in which their love would have no scars. But if that world existed, it was certainly out of their reach.

He reached out and trailed his knuckles carefully down Jaskier’s cheek, afraid that his fingertips would wake him with their unpleasant roughness.

Jaskier cracked open an eye. “You’re staring at me,” he mumbled with an affectionate and teasing smile.

“Hmm,” Geralt said, distracting Jaskier with a brush of lips before he could tease him further.

They didn’t kiss often. He suspected that they both feared its meaning. It was one thing to be bed partners, and another to be lovers. But the charade was slowly crumbling, and trust was taking its place. Perhaps one day he would have the courage to express the depth of his regard but for now he could only hope to transmute his sentiment into touch.

Jaskier sighed against his lips, sleepy and sated, and it was only when he nuzzled back into Geralt’s embrace, that he recognised the pleasant feeling for what it was – _Peace_.

*

Geralt lifts Jaskier’s unconscious body off the cart and into his arms. The villagers pelt pebbles and rotting fruit at them as they make their way through the streets. For a moment Geralt is transported back to Blaviken, bowing his head to their hatred as the stench of blood and piss and sweat fills his nostrils. He cradles Jaskier softly, and shields him from their fury, until he reaches the broken door of their rooms, still hanging on by its hinges.

The house is carnage. Anything of any value has been pillaged by thieves and everything else has been torn asunder. Geralt hopes that Jaskier’s lute survived the ordeal but he thinks it unlikely. At least the bed is still intact – presumably on account of it being too large to move – and Geralt gently lays Jaskier on his front before beginning the horrendous task of pulling straws of hay from his clotting wounds.

Geralt has removed most of the debris and has started cleaning the deep gashes with alcohol when Jaskier eventually wakes.

The bard takes a minute to wince and check his surroundings, and then, spotting Geralt, slumps back down on the bed. “I must be alive. If I was dead, I wouldn’t be in this much fucking pain.”

Geralt smiles wryly, and moves Jaskier’s hair away from his face as gently as he can. “A fair complaint,” Geralt allows, “but I’m glad you’re in the land of the living.”

Jaskier snorts, as if disagrees, but he’s clearly too exhausted to form a stronger argument.

“I’m going to continue cleaning your wounds. Just lie back and think of Nilfgaard.”

“Oh ha ha,” Jaskier says sardonically before Geralt drops the alcohol across the next gash and he tenses and gasps in pain. “Nilfgaard, you say? Maybe I’ll try for Oxenfurt. Nilfy didn’t quite do it for me there.”

Geralt hides his smile, wondering if Jaskier, too, is thinking of their last peaceful days together.

When Geralt’s cleaned and taped the deepest wounds, he levers him into a sitting position and presses a tankard of water into his hands. It looks like the movement causes a moment of dizziness, so Geralt holds him in place and studies just how pale Jaskier truly is – sickeningly so, even his lips have turned white. “Drink. I’ll get you food and a change of clothes.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier gasps, as his weak arm reaches out to tangle in Geralt’s bloodied shirt. “You don’t have to do this. You can go. You tried to warn me and I didn’t…”

There’s a tear on his cheek. Geralt wonders how he can still have the strength to cry.

“I didn’t _listen_.” Jaskier swallows, and licks his dry lips. “You don’t owe me anything, Geralt. You’ve done what you can. Just leave your fucking degenerate bard in this fucking wreck of a house like he bloody well deserves.”

Geralt’s jaw clenches. His heart stutters with grief. He wanted Jaskier to be cautious of their hatred but hearing their poisonous words come out of his lover’s mouth makes him want to _vomit_.

Geralt inhales deeply, taking a moment to compose himself, before he kneels on the bed beside Jaskier and takes his beaten face into his hands. “We’re _both_ fucking degenerates,” he says, “and we _deserve_ more than they will ever fucking give us. You’re _mine_ , Jaskier, and I’m sorry you bore the weight of their hatred but I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you to suffer it alone.”

Jaskier’s eyes are wide and searching, like he doesn’t understand, or like he doesn’t believe the proclamation.

 _They broke him_ , he thinks. _They didn’t just break his smile this time, they broke him._

Geralt presses a desperate kiss to his hairline and cradles Jaskier’s broken body in his arms until life finally breaks through the shell once more. He feeds him, and bathes him, and clothes him, and when Jaskier finally falls into a restless sleep, Geralt knows that he will stay by his side, even after the scars of their hatred have healed.


End file.
